Considerations for the understanding of the preceding image

(The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, by Albrecht Dürer)

The wheels for torture were broken with the explosion and death of the executioners, and the sky blasted and roared with a hailstorm, while the earthly fire departed from St. Catherine, she had the neck sliced by iron and thus ended. But there is something more in this picture, or better it most completely written in eternity by the carvings in the wood.

The wheel is the center, a little eccentric, as is the center of a fan, which is full although not round. And there is a crank for moving the wheel and this wheel is double and the two halves rotate in opposite directions, as also opens the fan.

The wheel is the center, a little eccentric, as is the center of a fan, which is full although not drive. And there is a crank for moving the wheel and this wheel is double and the two halves rotate in opposite directions, as in the open fan’s movement. 

The flames flow according to this rotation like water from a mill, and the soil’s fragments of the hill rush towards them, which continue them, and the trees above are further stacked in horizontal pieces that go down from the right section, as a cloud, and feed the turning of the wheel.

The rain of heaven falls according to both sides of an isosceles triangle whereupon these horizontal sizes are based; the filled basis folds itself (shaped as a pluviometer) and creates the right arm of the executioner, raising cloak and sword at the right side; the left arm remais covered, as the wind rises his coat from the ventilation fins of the blower wheel, the two ears of a pentagon or reversed kite; and the shape of the triangle is visible too, to signify God: the fire of the Father between co-personnel clouds.

And above the city, which is carried by the wheel, there is a hill that descends from the sky, and drops to the ground where are the dead executioners and recall the leaves around the wheel; and there are three stages in the image, to signify the three worlds. The hill flows harmoniously with the folds of the dress and the beautiful curved line of the gastrocnemius muscles, which are the Dürer's legs.

​This dress and these legs are the tail and the dress of a greater Saint beheaded that fills the image, with the croup on the shoulder of the executioner, the navel on the eye of Catherine, the cut in the horizontal terminal line to the pieces of the hill. The severed neck ends according to the hard edge of the a man fleeing radius, in the extension of one of the features with clouded nuance that is more thrusting than sword. And the head and the hair rolled from the city and trees sloping towards the mill wheel, for the new gyration.

​Alfred Jarry (Perhinderion, n. 02, June 1896)

Above, as an introduction to the new Raphus Press book series, the translation of a brief review by Alfred Jarry to the expressive, troubled and apocalyptic  Dürer's engraving about Saint Catherine last moments. The first book will be a translation of the Jarry's creation to his other imagery magazine, L'Ymagier, plus a introductory piece, a imaginary portrait/exegesis.